Thanks to the omniscient power of the internet, I recently reconnected with my best friend from middle school.
My friend and I will forever share the bond of having spent roughly 87 percent of our seventh grade year in search of dirty magazines and effective places in which to cache them. But our present lives have somewhat less in common. He's an attorney, and I'm a … [Read more...]

My friend Morgan and I had planned to go backpacking this past weekend. But with Colorado's recent historic floods having shut down many auto routes into the mountains, heading west was clearly not in the cards. So, in light of the devastation that our communities had endured, we did what any caring, concerned citizens of the Centennial State would have done.
We went to … [Read more...]

My wife and I went camping over the weekend. Camping at Labor Day is an annual tradition of ours, dating all the way back to back when we began dating. Every year we fill the Subaru with enough food and gear to comfortably occupy a minor principality, and we drive---more or less exclusively in second gear---up to the mountains.
We always look forward to this little weekend … [Read more...]

I love it when customer service representatives, airline agents, and recorded messengers tell me about The System. As in, "It will take two business days for The System to update," or, "It doesn't look as if you're in The System," and, "We are currently experiencing higher than normal wait times as our System has just dined upon a small pony and is enlisting additional CPUs in … [Read more...]

Inspired by a certain show concerning a certain city in the Pacific Northwest, my other half and I recently convinced ourselves that it was time to bring back a bit of the 90s in our own particular way.
Yes, the time was ripe to dust off the old inline skates, which we would discover, following a decade of storage, could also accurately be described as ripe. I was pleased to … [Read more...]

As our population continues to expand, conscientious citizens should maintain and develop an appreciation for how our behaviors and environments affect other creatures. One creature in particular, which could at one time have truly been called wild, has now become so accustomed to humans that inter-species conflicts are almost routine. This animal, once it has developed a taste … [Read more...]

Not long ago, I hired a personal trainer. If you're not familiar with personal training, it is an advanced stage of Stockholm syndrome in which the hostage pays his or her captor to supervise his or her own torture.
I am, of course, kidding: my trainer is exemplary and has more patience than a mildly sedated Tibetan monk. You know those cooking shows where teams are challenged … [Read more...]